Here Comes the Sun

Christmas Day on the pebble beach at the Baie des Anges in Nice

Our Christmas was excellent and completely unexpected. Not that we expected a bad Christmas, more that we didn’t think we’d be walking down the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, on Christmas day, that’s all. When we left our little village in the Vaucluse unexpectedly early last week and headed southeast along the A8, the drive was, for me, somewhat surreal. The cold, smoke-filled sky was brooding and bone chilling when we left. We’d been no further than three feet away from our fireplace for weeks barring a couple of trips to buy wine. But after an hour, I couldn’t believe my eyes—blue skies. It just kept getting better, too. “Oh look, there’s Mont Sainte-Victoire,” the great purplish triangular stone mountain that Paul Cezanne painted obsessively. I was seeing it with my own eyes. Then as we continued for another hour, there began to appear road signs with names that I had seen only on maps, in books, or movies: Saint-Tropez, Fréjus, Cannes, Antibes, Cagnes-sur-Mer, and finally, Nice. These road signs were more like posters, really, large monotone illustrations with travel scenes of all these places. But the most impressive thing, and the theme of this blog post, was the re-emergence of the sun. I could hear George Harrison in my head.

And with it, our spirits immediately lifted, and they have stayed elevated ever since.

In Nice, we’re staying in a busy, noisy, and very centrally located part of Nice, called Thiers, or more commonly, Les Quartiers Musiciens (The Musicians neighborhood). It’s called this because the streets are named after composers. The streets bustle with a mixture of sounds: tourists dragging their suitcases along the sidewalks and making the sound of trains passing over ballasts; North African immigrants who seem incapable of conversing at less than full-throated yelling; and hundreds of scooters whizzing past at all hours of the day and night. There is a hospital directly across the street from us and I see a lot of older folks coming and going, the door opening and closing incessantly. Our apartment is 31 square meters, or about 333 square feet, on the French first floor, or the US second floor, as they count the ground as 0 here. Tiny, really, but typical for France. It has a small living room, a bedroom, and an even smaller kitchen and bathroom. But I can actually do some cooking and I can turn around in the shower, which is often how I judge whether the bathroom is good or not.  

There are cafés, restaurants, and many excellent halal butchers in the neighborhood. I had my hair cut on the first day we were here on the corner by a barber of Arab descent. Luckily, he and I shared the same hair style and when he asked me in French how I wanted my hair cut, I told him, “Comme le tien,” (like yours), which he thought was funny. Queue the buzzing sound of clippers. We are only a couple of blocks from the train station and even better, just a few minutes’ walk to the beach. It couldn’t be a better location for us to discover Nice.

Blue skies and the blue Mediterranean Sea along the Promenade des Anglais

Each morning, I wake up and raise the metal shutter outside our bedroom window with a hand crank and as the bottom of the shutter reaches the top of the window frame it reveals the strip of sky just above the five-story hospital. It’s always an impossible color of cobalt blue. Every day it’s the same and it makes me smile. It also demands that we go outside every day, to which we oblige. We head down the single flight of stairs from our apartment door and when we pull the building’s front door open, we are greeted by neither heat nor cold, just a lovely winter temperature that allows me to wear a short sleeve shirt nearly every day. I am in a constant state of awe and disbelief.

The other great thing about Nice in December is the light. As a photographer, I just cannot get enough of it. Low light scrapes across the southern sky the entire day melting into long blue puddles of shadows. When light strikes anything colorful—the ochre, orange, and Venetian red paint on the buildings, the blue Mediterranean Sea, or even just a pink plastic bag carrying somebody’s lunch—the colors saturate, and the contrast makes the shapes jump. I have my X100V or my iPhone 15 out at nearly all times, it seems.

The light here is luscious

Saturated colors and deep colorful shadows

Menton

And so, here we found ourselves on Christmas morning, out for a long walk before I went back to our apartment to make the braised short ribs purchased at one of those butchers around the corner for Christmas dinner. Along the promenade, everywhere I looked it was a postcard. My fellow tourists walking past, sitting in the famous blue chairs facing the sea, or the white benches designed for people watching. They let the sun baste their faces as did I and we shared the same feelings; “Is this real? Is it really Christmas Day and am I really on the French Riviera?”

That feeling of peace created by the sunshine hasn’t abated once since we arrived. I’m just very happy here. We both are.

Everyone has the same idea here

We walk around every day learning the personalities of the different neighborhoods with names like Jean Médecin, Carabacel, or the Carre D’Or. We discover great places to eat like Little Hanoi, a terrific Vietnamese place in the central district, or the Corsican pizza place near our apartment. Who knew there was Corsican pizza? I had Mediterranean octopus and a glass of Champagne for lunch today at La Favola in Vieux Nice, the Old City. After that, we browsed the brocante market and saw antiques, silver, art, jewelry, books, old LV luggage, furs, and you name it.

Negotiations are fierce at the brocante market

The day before we took the tram two stops to the Libération neighborhood where they have a meandering fruit and vegetable market in the plaza as well as a huge outdoor fresh fish market. This takes place every day except Monday. We bought everything we needed to cook for the next five days from several different stands with the freshest produce: onions, garlic, figs, Romanesco, fennel, apples, salad greens, kiwi, and a beautiful piece of Atlantic salmon. After we delivered the food back home, we left again to visit the Museum of Photography where we saw 140 Vivian Maier prints. Incredible. All of this is on foot, by the way, and all of it under a brilliant shining sun.

The local seafood is soooo good

My connection to Nice seems preternatural. I constantly get visual flashes of my early life while I am traveling around here. We’ve also been to the nearby towns of Villefranche-sur-Mer, Monaco, and Menton, near the Italian border. No matter where we are, I see a little piece of La Jolla here, Santa Barbara there, now Ocean Blvd in Santa Monica, now the industrial area south of Market Street in San Francisco when I was a young photographer’s assistant and a student running errands at the labs every day in my early 20s. More than anything, there are so many areas that are dead ringers for the surrounding hills and golden cliffs of my home city of San Diego. The verdant colors, the palm trees, the rolling hills with granite, and most definitely, the endless sun, they all remind me of my youth. I remember growing up and hearing the phrase “California Mediterranean” a lot and never really understanding exactly what that meant.

This image could be of me and my brother, Scott, 50 years ago in San Diego

Somewhat ironically, these things also remind me of my current age. I say this because I have had to become very honest with myself and admit that as I age, the need to be warm has become very important to me. When I was younger, I would complain that living in Southern California was a bit of Groundhog Day, every day being just the same as the previous and they would be just the same tomorrow, too. Those who know me also know that I have lived a lot of places with all kinds of different weather patterns and vibes—southern, desert, tropical, big city, and the Emerald City, rain-USA. I have loved those experiences throughout my life. I was lucky to work for a company that allowed me to continue moving whenever I needed to. Most people who live in California, especially Southern California, relish the endless sunshine, the ability to be outdoors nearly every day, the incredible access to the ocean, the mountains, the desert, and the fresh produce and fish. I finally understand this. I know that seems rather obvious, but it hasn’t really been important to me at all, until now.

Sunset watching will be one of our hobbies

Anyone reading this would most likely suggest I just move home if I have suddenly realized that I would like to be in that environment again, and while I can’t do that for a number of reasons, the simplest reason is cost. It’s shamefully ironic that I can’t have the same quality of life in California that I can have in the south of France, isn’t it? Most people would assume that this would be the more expensive of the two places to live. But it’s nearly two-thirds less expensive here. And while I wish that the Côte d’Azur was much closer to California in terms of proximity, it turns out that it’s nearly the same in terms of geography, yet without the exorbitant price tag. I guess what I am saying is that we are investing a lot of time, energy, and emotion into Nice, right now, and it is currently the best contender for our new home since we began traveling. Even more so than Dijon, and we really liked Dijon.

We’ll be in Nice for another three weeks before heading to Taiwan, and we have so much more to see and experience here. I’ll keep you all posted in the weeks to come.